Will some extremely bad luck costing the game make the game mechanism being considered as broken?

Hi Fayinsky,

Here's what I would do. I understand that the chance of losing the game due to pure luck is small, but it is going to really turn off any players that have it happen to them. If you see it as an issue, I would do something to prevent it from happening.

Maybe you could add a rule where virus detection is automatic if you spend all three actions towards detection (as long as it doesn't break the game). While you may want the game to be more random, some players may prefer spending all their actions at once to secure a certain outcome and give up the versatility of attempting three different actions. If you choose to go this route, I think it should be an all or nothing approach. What I mean by this is, you can't roll your first two actions and fail, and just spend the last action and get an automatic success. You would have to say at the beginning of the turn, I spend all three actions now to detect the virus.

This might not be what you are looking for, but those are just my two cents.

In your case, there's an impasse on whether or not to adjust the game balance according to feel or adjust the game balance according to strict numbers.

Ultimately, you want your players to be interested in the world of cells and no one is really going to get the game and believe that everything that happens in the game happens in real life. You want to simulate the process, not mimic it exactly.

That's is why it's called a game.

With that said, I'd change it. What initial game designs don't account for and what play testing does is that it takes into account the human element. If it happens 1.32% of the time, it will happen more often than you think. Theoretically, if 10 people play tested solo, then there should be a 10% chance that one of them will encounter the problem. If 100 people played, 1 person WILL get it...statistically. If that series of events will make it discouraging for the player, then change it.

Even big games like Call of Duty get people to believe that they can go into a war and do well, but in reality no one gets shot and recovers 10 seconds later.

I had this issue with my game. I knew there was a very small chance that a certain combination of cards could result in a one-hit-kill. I didn't think the chances of that happening would occur, but it did. Because it did, I changed it. Of course you can't account for every single instance, but you playtest, iterate, playtest, iterate, etc. until you feel it's right.

Good luck on your design!

If a luck-driven mechanic is causing a problem, often the solution is to allow a player to mitigate the luck.

Perhaps players could have cards or tokens that they can spend to allow for extra re-rolls or changing a roll up or down by 1, turn the die to its opposite side or whatever. You could call them Complement cards or cytokines or whatever is thematically fitting. You could make them a limited one time use resource or something players could purchase during the game.

Good luck, I hope this helps.

Bad luck happens when you introduce any game based heavily on a die roll. Anybody who has played games extensively knows that you can just go on a bad streak, just as you can go on a good streak. This is acceptable, for the most part. I've had games where I couldn't do jack because of bad dice rolls, but if they are a really good game, that's ok. It happens, and it wasn't like I lost because of what I did.

That is part and parcel to dealing with completely random elements. I like the idea that you can go all in, to counteract this, as mentioned in an idea above.

In my own game design, I've gravitated as much away from random elements as I can, but games without randomness in them, tend to lack variety. If you are trying to make Chess, everything is foreseeable, if you can look ahead enough in the possibilities of the game. But you are always going to have just chess. If that's what you want, fine, but Chess also has great strategic depth to it. That's how it can get around not having variety in the game itself... but a little Knightmare Chess, though, adding a little chaos to a great game, can add a lot of fun.

I like having meaningful choices. Randomness provides the playing field, but I like having options for how to manage that randomness, so it doesn't quite kill you if you say, get some bad rolls.

For example. Customizable/Trading Card Games. You build your deck in a way to combat the randomness that comes from what you draw during the game. But what if you just keep drawing poorly? Something like Magic, basically means, you are screwed. There is no way to counter a bad draw (because you only draw 1 card a turn, unless you have an effect that says otherwise). Something like Star Wars, though, the decipher based one, you can recover by focusing on drawing up your cards instead of playing cards. You can either use your 'activated cards' to pay costs for cards in your hand, or draw those activated cards into your hand. It may take you a bit longer to set up, but you still have a chance of pulling out the game if you put together a good enough deck.

Anyway, good luck with your game design. I just wanted to add my thoughts on randomness, I hope they provide food for thought.

If the game is quick and simple, losing by bad luck is OK. If it's longer and players have invested more time and thought process, it might be damn disheartening to lose to a couple of snake eyes.